Overview of integration with a payment system

From the Payment screen of some jobs, a user can collect information about the payment source for immediate or future payments. Typically, PolicyCenter transfers control to an external third-party system to collect payment source information. You configure PolicyCenter to use an external third-party system to collect and store payment source information to avoid storing that information in the PolicyCenter database.

For example, the insured can specify in the external payment processing system to use a specific credit card number for immediate or future billing. The payment system collects the insured’s private financial information for the transaction and returns to PolicyCenter a token that represents the payment instrument. Whenever PolicyCenter sends this token to the billing system, the billing system uses that token to initiate a payment in the same third-party payment system. Alternatively, PolicyCenter can communicate with an external payment gateway to create the token without taking a payment.

PolicyCenter can receive a deposit for a reporting plan or a down payment for an installment plan as an up-front payment. Similarly, PolicyCenter can take an additional up-front payment as changes, renewals, and rewrites modify the amount of the deposit or down payment that the policy requires. These payments can use the same payment instrument as other payments for the job, such as installments, or a different instrument. For electronic payments, PolicyCenter transfers control to an external payment gateway that processes the payment. The gateway returns information about the success or failure of the payment to PolicyCenter. PolicyCenter sends the information about successful up-front payments to the billing system.